


again

by hellynz



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Dark, F/M, Gen, Unhealthy Relationships, non-consensual telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:22:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22278592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellynz/pseuds/hellynz
Summary: She tries to continue on. His voice drags her back.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor & The Master (Dhawan), Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 59
Kudos: 368





	1. i

For all of the lives she’s lived, she has never been a good actress. But this time around, even as she keeps trying, her motivation has dwindled to nothing.

“Maybe it’ll help your mardy mood,” Yaz tosses over towards her. She’s still watching carefully, even if it lacks the worry from earlier.

The Doctor straightens. “My mood’s fine,” she says, and it slips like ice from her lips, billows into the room like a chill. A lie. She knows it. And they know it, too, she thinks, as she watches them talk to each other. Turn towards each other, away from her.

Ryan laughs. Not quite a malicious tease, but one at her expense. It is not meant to sting but it does, wriggling into her hearts. They have grown annoyed with her. 

She has always kept herself a bit away. A step ahead, a little further than arms length in between them. Talking and moving too fast for them to quite keep up. This is different. This is colder. She might still be lying but she is not trying to hide the fact that her mood is foul. She is icy blue and her voice is cold and her hearts throb with a terrible persistence in her chest.

They asked her a question, asked her who she was, really. She barely said a word, tossed a few half answers at them, more air than fact. She wasn't trying to disrespect them. But that's how they took it. They think she does not trust them. It makes them not trust her.

She presses her lips together. Fine. That is fine. Keeps them safer, if they don’t really want to talk to her. If they don’t trust her entirely.

The Master snickers in the back of her mind. _Might be safer, but it hurts your feelings quite a bit, doesn’t it, Doctor?_

She ignores him. She’s gotten very good at that, considering he hasn’t stopped talking to her in weeks.

—————

At first, her friends had not been annoyed or suspicious. They had only been concerned.

She found Gallifrey burned, and she thought about falling to her knees. She thought about screaming, or crying, falling forward, letting sand run through her fingers as smoke billowed into her nose.

Maybe, she mused, hot tears welling into her eyes but never falling, it would be easiest to just lie down and never stand back up. Let herself fade away. The TARDIS as her monument. To accept the nothingness thudding in her chest and curl into it, embrace it. Become it.

Instead, she turned back inside, watched the Master’s message, and picked up her friends again.

Ignore, repress, move on. Forward, forward, forward, forward, forward. She's the king of moving on. And she could have been totally fine. She would have. She tried so hard.

Days pass, planets pass. Plenty to do, plenty to see, distractions around every corner. She does not have to think about her home, her oldest friend, what they did to each other. So she doesn’t.

They can tell. They watch her falter and they don’t know what to do for her, and she does not know what to do with herself either. She can feel her grief like a pressure at the back of her skull, tearing at her, desperate. Yaz’s eyes are big and sad when they look at her. She turns from them.

She brings her friends to an arcade on an asteroid. Future humans, expanding their retro toys to the stars. Ryan wins a prize for scoring three baskets in a row. It’s the smallest prize, the ones kept under the table instead of hung on the walls to draw customers in. But Graham and Yaz cheer, and Ryan smiles a little.

So does the Doctor, when they look at her. Expectant and hopeful, their eyes wide. She stretches it across her mouth like plastic. She sees that the hope flickers in their faces and she holds her jaw stiff so that her bottom lip does not wobble. Forces more brightness into her eyes. She almost pats Ryan on the back like she might have with Rory, or with Jack. 

It burned again, she thinks. It burned again, it burned _again_.

She thinks about sand and the way it felt in her fingers. She does not lay a hand on any of them.

Yaz is up and she squeezes a strength test, they all watch the levels light up, she beats the strongman level and she turns to grin at them, one arm coming up to fake flex. Her eyes flicker to the Doctor and away, nervous. So do Graham’s, though Ryan is a bit better at hiding it.

They know. They are all watching her, all gauging her reactions. All waiting to see if she is really happy, or if she is faking it.

She straightens her back and grins, stretching the plastic of her mouth, baring the hard white of her teeth. She is bored, she is floating in grief, the waves of it battering at the edges of her throat, threatening to drown her. But her friends will not be burdened with her not-happiness. She won’t do that to them.

She feels that pressure again, in the back of her mind. And then something cracks.

It shifts in slow jerks, inch by inch. Like a door opening, just the tiniest bit, and fingers curling around the edge. A nightmare. She can't tell if there is a figure there or if it's just a trick of her imagination. The fingers wiggle, half of a wave.

 _Hi_ , he had said, his smile gone from warm kindness to a shocking, burning mirth.

She hadn’t felt him before that, somehow. Three faces ago she had sensed him like another part of herself. Her last face and this one, growing less and less desperate, had not sought him out. They had been lonely but they had not been so desperate not to be the only one. But she can feel him now, hot and heavy, sliding his way into her mind.

 _Liar,_ he growls. _And you’re bad at it in this version, too._

Her whole body goes cold.

“Course you’re the strongest one here, Yaz, I could’ve told you that!” she shouts over the echoes of his voice ( _it has to be an echo, he isn’t there, he can’t be_ ), her eyes too wide and taking a lurching step forward. But her friends seem to take it as enthusiam, and Ryan begins a joking protest. 

_Lying about who you are, lying about where you’re from. Lying about what you’ve lost._

She leads them to the next game, legs stiff and head held high. 

—————

He can’t be there. He can’t be in her head so easily without her permission. But the feeling is too familiar to be fake.

Part of being a telepathic being, part of growing up surrounded by other telepathic beings, is learning to put defenses in place. Etiquette says you must seek permission first, or at least do the mental equivalent of knocking. An announcement, so that the owner of the thoughts can sweep away anything they don’t want exposed. But to sweep away means to hide. Even the weakest users had at least one strong wall, at least one corner of their beings that they could shove their darkest secrets into.

The Doctor’s walls are the equivalent of six inches of lead, when she wants them to be. Which, in this body, is all the time. And yet there he is, lounging in the corners of her brain. Waiting. Watching. Talking.

He cannot be peeking in, he cannot be simply sliding the door open just the littlest bit. A demon under a trap door, a pair of eyes underneath a rock. He’d have to bang first, and she feels nothing. There is never any warning before he speaks up, throws his opinion out into the open as if it matters, as if she cares.

So she ignores the maybe-not-quite-empty back of her head, she adds an extra lock to her defenses.

He still speaks to her. 

She tries to focus on anything else. Staring into the innards of the TARDIS after hours of working, her eyes blurry with sweat and with exertion, she can hear him pounding at her.

_Can’t even run a TARDIS properly, in your old age. How old are you, this time around? Not sure when we’re meeting up, timelines getting crossed and all that._

She grits her teeth and shoves her hands back inside the machine, only barely noticing the heat against them, the way sharp edges tear at her skin.

 _Getting self destructive,_ he simpers. _I approve._

Eventually, the sad looks loose their sympathy. Instead of getting sadder when she turns away, her friends get annoyed, turn into frustration. It has been weeks, her mood has only worsened, and even though they are the best of the best, their patience only has so far to stretch.

It would have bothered her that they lost it so fast, if she had given them any reason at all to hold onto it. But she does not. She continues forward. She insists she is fine and she does not take their teasing well and she feels her past selves leaking from her, more condescending, more terse.

They start snapping back when she snaps at them. A short answer gets another short response. When the terror and the loneliness bite at her heels and she can only choke out a word or two, fake smile pressed against her face like a mask, they flinch and they try not to glare and they try not to let her see the glances they share.

 _It’s not my fault,_ she wants to say. _It’s not, I didn’t do it this time, it isn’t because of me._

She wants to scream at them. Desperate, devastated, she wants to shriek at them to understand her. She wants them to feel for her, to know what she is going through and to hold her together, to take the pieces of her soul and keep them from shattering. If they could just hear her, if she would just speak, they could help her, she knows it. They could hold her together. She aches for it.

She says nothing. She moves forward again. Because to garner their sympathy, to get their help, would mean explaining. And she will not do that. She decides that if she tries hard enough, if she forces herself enough, they will forgive her for the thing they do not know she has done. For the history she does not have to apologize for because it sort of did not technically happen. For lying to them, but not really.

And yet.

 _They don’t get it,_ he muses as she leads her friends past a lake that flashes with pink and yellow glowing creatures, waves that rise and fall smoothly, mentally manipulated by the locals. Watery orbs full of the jellyfish-like beings floating through the air like lanterns. _They think you’re grumpy about something, maybe just not getting enough sleep. It's annoying. You're ruining their fun adventure times, Doctor!_

A waiter bumps into her and she almost snaps at him, manages a "it's fine," when the being apologizes.

Ryan snorts behind her. "You got lucky, mate, these days she'd just as soon bite your head off," he says, and she hears Yaz breathe out a laugh through her nose and she feels Graham shrug his shoulders and nod. She feels them all staring at her, waiting to see if she will react. For a long moment, she just stands there. Her chest aches.

_Could they even comprehend it at all, if you bothered to explain it to them?_

She does not answer her friends. She does not answer him, either. He cannot really be there. If she answers, then she is admitting. If he is real and she admits he is real and he is saying the same things she is thinking, then they are real too.

He cannot be there, and so he isn’t. Her friends want to tease her, they can. She will not react.

But as they duck under a bridge made of the light-filled waters, he monologues in her inner ear.

_Course, it’s not really their fault, is it, Doc? You have kept them utterly in the dark, you haven’t said a word about you or your past. Where would you even begin?_

“The Verculeans,” she explains, jabbering away, only half hearing her own words, “can manipulate liquid substances with their minds. They’ve used it for thousands of years in their worship rituals, but they also put on a show every once in awhile. Plus, in other parts of the world, they have some excellent water parks.”

_Didn’t we learn about these people in the academy? Powerful telepaths. Do your friends know you’re telepathic? Do they know you could wipe their minds away with a touch?_

They get dinner, and the humans marvel at the displays, and the Doctor watches through half lidded eyes, her chin resting in one hand, and she does not listen to him. Sadness flutters in her throat. She does not acknowledge it.

_You don’t actually know that they could be there for you, you won't even give them the chance, and yet you're desperate for it. It is pathetic. They worry about you, but you won’t even give them the chance. You can’t do it. Not even for them. What happens when they don’t worry at all anymore?_

He is laughing at her. Ryan says something that she does not quite catch. She forces her face to stretch farther. Her friends notice, again, because they won’t stop noticing, and in some forms it must be a good trait but all it does is thud at her, irritated and sore and raw.

_They think you’re being dramatic. Throwing some kind of long-term tantrum. They will leave you soon._

She shakes her head viciously, ignores the looks she gets, sits up straighter, breathes deeper. Holds herself together in shaking hands. Sand pouring.

“You alright there, Doc?” Graham asks, and her eyes jerk up to meet his. She hopes that they are not as wet as they feel. She forces steel into them to compensate.

_You’re fine, you’ll say._

“Fine,” she says, and Graham wilts back a bit and then turns to Ryan again. Her stomach coils with resentment. She can't quite tell who the resentment is for.

—————

When she sleeps, he drags her into nightmares.

She thinks she won’t be able to for a very long time, not with the image of her home burning stuck behind her eyelids. But it only takes a few days for tiredness to sink into her bones. The chance to shut her eyes against reality, even if it is nightmares she escapes into, feels like a blessing. Even if she sees Gallifrey burning, at least she will see it.

She does not expect him. But then, what does he ever do if not surprise her.

They stand in the Kasaavin forest.

His fists are clenched, and he screams, throwing his head back. He trembles. He is so furious it should be leaking from him, should be crashing over her and whirling her up into the same state. But it is nothing against the heat she already feels in her chest.

When his yelling stops, it stops all at once, and he turns towards her, dark eyes flashing in the dim light. They look at each other for a long time.

And suddenly, they aren’t in the other world anymore. Suddenly, they are home again. It flashes between red and orange, between alive and burnt. She can’t quite breath, the air charred and tingling with explosives. 

_Are you really in my head?_ she wonders dumbly, letting her eyes travel across the ruins of their home.

It had shocked her, the first time. This second time around is just filled with a heavy acceptance.

It feels normal to see Gallifrey on fire.

He does not answer her question. _How did you do it,_ he asks. His presence in her mind is heavy and sad. And underneath, a barely contained rage quivers. _How did you move on?_

She almost feels sorry for him. But she holds it back. If it had been hard for her, why would she make it easy for him.

 _I didn’t_ , she thinks, and she doesn't realize till it is out there that it is the truth, and the world crashes around her. Burning, fire, and smoke, and screams. The very air chokes her. Heat against her face, tears on her cheeks. Children crying. Glass breaking. Terror in her throat like a clenched fist.

And he stands beside her the whole time. He stares, and he does not move, and in the end he starts to laugh, his face cold and sad still but his shoulders shaking. He falls to his knees and she does too, and then laugh together, crying, like they both had after they both ended-

She jerks away with a gasp. She is in her room, on her bed, on her TARDIS. Her own sheets are around her, her own smell and her own sky.

He feels like he could have just been in her dreams, again. Real when she was asleep, faded when she is awake. She reaches for their bond and it slips through her fingers like sand, only half there. The TARDIS flickers their thoughts together, a warm and comforting brush. The Doctor holds back from that, too.

 _At least it wasn’t me this time,_ she thinks in the general direction of her ceiling. She feels groggy, dim. More exhausted then when she went to sleep. _At least it wasn’t my fault._

In the back of her mind, she can feel him grinning. It is wet and warm and slimy.

_Oh, Doctor. Everything I do, I do for you. Of course it's your fault._


	2. ii

She spends the night trapped in her own mind, and he sits at her side. Her head throbs in four beats. Her eyes feel gritty.

He starts telling her stories, he brings her back to their home. He reaches into their shared memories and he plucks her favorites and he spreads them out in front of her and tells her how they can never be recreated.

She sees the landscape of her home, she can taste the air. He burns it all again.

A sob threatens to break free from her throat and she clenches every muscle she can feel. She will not cry, he is not there, her friends could walk in at any moment, he has no control over her-

_For years, I’ve been learning. Realizing. And you were doing- what, exactly? Off having fun?_

The world is wavering before her. She needs to ground herself. She stalks from her bedroom and she lists what she knows.

She is in the TARDIS, she is alone, she has three human friends on board. She is not talking to anyone else. The console appears before her and she dives underneath it, leaning back. She drums her fingers against the floor, trying to distract herself until she recognizes the rhythm. Her fingers jerk away like she’s been burned.

 _And you think you had nothing to do with it this time. It’s all your fault, Doctor, it always will be,_ he sings, and chuckles darkly, and then all humor leaves his voice and he is screaming.

_Your FAULT, your fault, YOUR fault, your-_

She tries to work, she tries to fuss with the controls and the regulators and make the levels give a more satisfying amount of resistance, but nothing distracts her. Nothing. Not the way her fingers burn on too-hot valves, not the way her knees and back start to ache from her hunched kneel 

_-kneel-_

, and no matter how she tries she cannot get herself to ignore him-

_It’s all your fault, it always has been, even if you saved them once you cannot do it again, they are gone-_

-because everything he says resonates, it builds in her like a drumbeat-

_No matter what you do it will never be enough, because you are alone, you have no one to even make it up to, your friends only move further away from you, your home is burned. I want you to die, I want to watch you burn alive too._

-and eventually, she just sits and listens.

“Doctor?” someone says. The Master’s spell breaks and reality cracks over her, a cold, split yolk. She blinks once, and then again, and looks up to see Ryan, standing over her.

He looks terribly worried. She realizes she is clutching her head with both hands, fingers drawn into fists in her hair. For just a moment, she can see herself from his perspective. Slumped against machinery, eyes distant and- and sad, suffering. Worrying.

The Master no longer screams, but she can hear him, breathing hot and angry. She does not acknowledge him, even though the urge is strong. Her teeth clenched so hard that her jaw aches.

_Ignore me much longer and I’ll make you break your own molars._

He can’t be there, she tells herself. She loosens her jaw.

Grin across her face like a swipe of plaster. She jerks forward. “Oh- hey Ryan, couldn’t sleep?”

He takes a few steps back as she staggers to her feet, jolting forward in little gasps, her vision pin pricking white. 

“No,” he says, and he’s still worried, his face is still all crumpled up in concern and she hates herself for it. “Slept great, and we’ve all been up for hours now. Didn’t know where you were.” 

“Huh,” she says, slowing for just a moment, letting her hands reach for the console even though she has no idea what to do with them. She had not realized how much time had passed, not even a little bit. It hadn't felt like minutes.

“Were you sitting there all night?”

“No,” she says immediately, because the lies are automatic now, she does not even consider telling the truth because the worry on his forehead will only deepen. “Just having a think, you know. Got this big old brain, sometimes I gotta sit down with it.”

A full night. A full night, gone, and a decent chunk of the day, and she’s spent it being forced into bits by the Master. Suddenly cold fury engulfs the agony in her chest and burns up her throat. She hurls her mental defenses up, shoving him, slamming her shoulder into the door he peeks through. Does everything she can to force him out.

It does not quite work. He’s still there, even if just barely. The tiniest echo in the back of her mind. She should be relieved, should relish in the moments where he is mostly gone. Or she should be frustrated, him sticking around where she does not want him. Out of place. But she is neither. She misses him.

It’s like revving a dying engine to set her mind whirling, takes a few desperate, harsh tries, but she does it. She through options that are not landing back on Gallifrey and leaving her humans to watch as she stumbles down the hill screaming, crying, how she saved it and it burned again and it is still somehow her fault. Let them watch her run sand through her fingers-

She wants to ask him, suddenly and with her hearts pounding in her throat, if he’s been Missy yet. She shouldn't, because what if he has not been and what might she do to his future if he hasn’t, but what if he has- she doesn’t ask, she doesn’t.

But why else would he go back, if he was not reformed?

He is quiet, for once. She can feel him, steaming in the back of her brain, but if her not-question reached him he doesn’t want to answer. 

She shifts past. New ideas, new planets, what to do, what next-

Ryan is still staring at her. She stretches her lips so far she feels one tear, just a little. Copper bursts in her mouth.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asks, and she curses herself. He can tell, he can still see.

“Right as rain.”

“You don’t look-” he starts, hesitant.

She does not let him finish. What would be the point?

They go to a party.

“No just any party,” she says, and she hopes her expression seems normal because while she has taken the time to carefully arrange it, she has not looked at herself in the mirror in weeks. “This side of the Galaxy’s largest constant party. They call it ‘All 537 Clicks’, essentially like a human saying ‘24/7’, means it’s always going, never any stops, always stuff to do-”

It is not her kind of place. But it is an excellent distraction. Music throbs through the air, lights flash different colors through darkness, no one can hear or see each other and she certainly cannot hear anyone yelling at her from the back of her head.

“Sure you’re up for it, Doc?” Graham says, giving her a once over. She feels out along her face, trying to spot the flaw he must have picked out.

“Course I’m up for it, Graham, don’t kill the vibe!” she says, trying for a jest. Ha ha, remember when I said that before, remember Rosa Parks, remember when Gallifrey still-

“Don’t try to tell me what I’m up for,” she says, sudden, the words bursting from her throat in a way she cannot quite control. She flinches. Her tone has changed, another unbidden act. 

All three humans look at her and she goes for a smile again, feels her split lip stinging. “Go on, have fun.”

They almost don’t listen to her. She can feel the urge to stay, to insist to know what is going on, but it fizzles and dies down under the weight of their insult. She is being mean to them. So they go off to have fun. Graham finds a seated section with a game show on wall sized screens. Ryan looks at her a little too long, but beside the genuine worry sits a whole pile of annoyance, of fed-up-ness, and he shrugs and drags Yaz off. Yaz’s gaze lingers the longest. But she turns, too, eventually. And the Doctor stands alone.

She does not plan to drink, but she wanders, not really paying attention to where she is going. Attendants flutter everywhere, holding scanners that they flash over the bodies of patrons. Two green blinks, the tray on their arm suddenly grows a new drink. And the Doctor tries to avoid them - doesn’t like to be scanned any more than absolutely necessary - but one snipes her from behind.

“Readings say you could really use this, love!” the purple haired humanoid says, grinning, and holding out a pint glass filled with something fizzy and orange.

Orange sky, burning, fire against, smoke in her lungs, sand between her fingers-

And then she sees him in the crowd.

He dances in a tiny space in the center of the floor. His hair whips around wildly as he thrashes, somehow in rhythm but dangerous, his arms flying like he wants to punch someone. He does not have to look at her for her to know it is him.

She tilts her head back and takes a huge swallow of the orange drink. It burns and swims in her head right away and she blinks, stomach turning sick at the taste, brain buzzing happily at the chance to block herself out. The attendant is leaving. She flags them down and orders another as she finishes the first.

He is still dancing. He still does not look up but he flows with the crowd, arms jerking, others ducking away from him as they pass. Her head starts to swim.

 _That can’t be you,_ she thinks, and in the back of her mind she feels his little gasp of joy like a rush of cool air.

_Ah! finally acknowledging me head on?_

She swallows hard. _Where are you?_

_Where do you think I am?_

He is smirking, she can feel it. She cannot tell if the figure across the room is too. She downs her second drink.

She loses time again. She watches the man who cannot be the Master dance until he vanishes into the crowd. She moves to follow but stumbles over her own feet as the floor bucks beneath her. The whole room is spinning, and she isn't dancing because she isn't in the mood but she can feel her body swaying, unsteady. She has another drink in her hand and she isn’t sure which number it is, but when she tilts her head to knock it back this time she spills down the front of her jumper, her new one that she likes so much and that had made her so simply happy when the TARDIS gave it to her before Gallifrey had burned again. Tears prick into her eyes.

 _I’ve ruined my shirt,_ she finds herself gasping, and the feeling of incredulous laughter that barrels from him almost knocks her down.

_Oh, please. Going to cry over it? And what, expect me to comfort you?_

She shakes her head, feeling the world move a little too much in each direction as she does. So what if she did, so what if she wanted his sympathy, because- 

_We were friends._

It is a bit satisfying to feel that she keeps surprising him. He hesitates before he answers, and in that moment she lets dream fill up her chest. The two of them, inseparable, young on Gallifrey, lying in the red sand.

_O wasn’t real._

She shudders, her shoulders curling forward and towards each other, because it wasn’t what she had meant but it was still true. And anguish begins to crawl up inside her, grasping her by the back of the neck and shoving her to the floor, she almost topples over, because that is not what she meant but that has happened too, two friends, both gone-

-she’d thought Missy had been reformed, there are tears spilling from her eyes, the rest of her drink splashes on the floor as she drops her cup-

-and suddenly Ryan is in front of her and has taken her by the shoulder, leading her out of the crowd. She wobbles, almost trips him just as much as she almost trips herself, but he keeps pushing her forward.

“‘M sorry-” she tries to mumble, and then swallows it, shaking her head when Ryan looks down at her, one eyebrow quirked over worried and irritated eyes.

“What?” he asks, and his voice is a little too sharp. There is worry there but it is clipped at the edge, held back.

 _For making you take care of me. For not telling you anything and still wanting you to help. For your Nan._ “Nothin’.”

He guides her to the ship and she sees Graham and Yaz waiting outside. They look so worried, and she is almost grateful for it, stumbles forward a step and lets a real smile spread across her face. Maybe they know, somehow, maybe they have learned. Maybe they have figured out what she cannot tell them and they’ve forgiven her for it.

Maybe, if she cries, they will comfort her, instead of making fun of her.

But when they see the state she is in, worry gives way to exasperation. Her smile chills in her chest and turns to plastic on her mouth. Sand in her fingers, sand in her hair, sand behind her eyes. Tears on her cheeks.

Ice cold locks worm their way into her chest. To cry means to admit. Admitting is not something that she will do. She pushes past instead, swaying, ignoring the protests and the hands on her shoulders.

“I’ll be fine, just-”

“No, Doctor, wait,” Yaz says, something so certain in her voice that the Doctor pauses. “Please. I don’t- we don’t like this, Doctor, we don’t like how you’re acting.”

She turns, tries to do it smoothly but the world twists below her and she stumbles back against a pillar.

“What acting?” she manages.

“Don’t try to pull that, Doc,” Graham says, and at least this time it makes more sense. Graham always tells her off, good old Graham. Yaz never does, just looks up at her with shining eyes, listens to every word in her rambles. “You’re drunk, and you’ve been crying, and something has been wrong ever since the Master-”

Her head throbs, she feels sick in her throat, and she shakes her head. 

"No, n- I'm not-"

_They will leave you, they want to leave you, you are holding them back because you're selfish-_

"...worrying us, it's-"

_You're selfish and you always have been, deary. They would be so much safer if they left, and happier, too, but you would die without them, wouldn't you?_

"-tor, are you lis-"

_-forcing them to stay with you, forcing them into danger, forcing them to care about you-_

“You’re doing it again,” comes Ryan’s voice, and suddenly she is out of the darkness, suddenly she has been tugged back into the light and she looks up at her friends. Her hands are in her hair.

"Doing what," she rasps. 

"Scaring us," Yaz says, and when the Doctor looks up at her, brown eyes are filled with tears. Her mouth drops open and she lowers her arms. 

“Oh! Sorry. Sorry if I scared you,” she says, exhaustion letting words slip out before she could claw them back down her throat. “That. That I scared you, I mean. Was I- did I say anything weird?"

Yaz looks dumbfounded. She shakes her head slowly, in big arcs, like she’s gone numb. “Didn’t say a word.”

“Where were you just now, Doc?” Graham asks. His voice is too soft.

She tries to smile but she thinks she might be crying again. “Right here, of course! I'm fine."

Ryan scoffs. "No, Doctor, you aren't, you don't even know if you're saying anything-"

She raised both of her hands in the air, throws up the tallest wall she can manage in the back of her mind. "Don't try to tell me I'm not fine," she says, wincing at the slur in her voice.

"You aren't," Yaz says weakly.

The Doctor has to resist the urge to stomp her foot like a child; only really manages not to because if she did, she does not think she'll be able to stay upright. "You do not get to tell me if I am or if I am not,” she says, trying to force steadiness into her voice and only succeeding in making it colder. “Go to bed.”

The room chills with her. The lights of the TARDIS have gone blue. It is easy to see, in their eyes, that this reach out, the olive branch dangling between them, will be the last one.

“Just- leave me alone.”

She shrugs off the immediate guilt and trips as she turns on the stairs, using her hands to keep going up like a child, and she knows she is making it worse. Every step away is another affront, every breath she takes that does not tell them Gallifrey burned again is a breath that hides from them, a breath that deepens their mistrust and stretches their bond. 

_You don’t have bonds with them to stretch. You’ve told them so little they hardly know who you are. If they had an inkling, they would never have come with you in the first place._

His voice is unwelcome and yet it is a relief- not alone, not alone, not alone. She slams into the bathroom door and shuts it soft behind her, leans onto the sink and grits her teeth.

_And now they think you'll never tell them. Stupid Doctor, drunk Doctor, what would you have done in this state if your friends had needed you? How would you have saved your precious humans if they don’t even want to deal with you? ‘Leave me alone’, you say, and they will now. They will, because they hate you, all of your friends end up hating you. And I hate you most of all, my darling Doctor._

“Get out,” she growls, the world swaying and spinning in front of her. “Get out!”

The door behind her shuts quickly. She jerks upright and whirls. 

Had someone been there?

_Ooh, bet that was one of your pets. Now they think you’re yelling at them, too. Telling them to leave._

She shakes her head. “No,” she whispers, entirely to herself this time, and she steps towards the door, one arm raised.

But to do what?

_That’s exactly it, love. What are you going to do? Apologize? What do you have to apologize for? You weren’t yelling at them. You going to tell them about me?_

“I- I didn’t-”

Sand through her fingers. Her vision thuds at the edges. Her feet are rooted to the ground.

_Was that them or was that you?_

He does not answer her.

_Please-_

He does not speak but she can feel him, smug. She is begging.

She clenches her hands into fists and slams them onto the edges of the sink. The angry smack of skin on porcelain echoes in the empty room. Her knuckles ache. She stumbles into the dark of her bedroom and throws herself on top of the sheets.

She does not sleep. He does not speak to her, either, and for some reason that hurts too.

Please, please, come back, please, she wants to cry, but she does not call out. She will not beg. She clenches her own throat shut and holds back a whimper and she does not call him.

Only more silence. 

She can feel it, off and distant in her body, when the TARDIS settles out of the vortex and onto solid ground. She does not know where or when, she does not know if her friends asked it to or if the ship just decided to herself. Have they left her? Have they somehow gotten them all back to Sheffield and now they’re going to walk out and never look back, never miss her, never-

He does not speak to her as she rises slowly after getting no rest, minding her aching head, to head for the console. To move the ship, to run away or to run back, to see if her friends have-

She can’t do it. To step around the doorframe and to see them landed in Sheffield, her fam long gone, never to return. The weight of the idea slams onto her shoulders, crushing her, and she hesitates before the last turn into the console room. It is heavy and aching on her and she leans against the wall and slides down.

Uncertainty swirls around her like fog, desperate and unclear. Was he in her head or not, were her friends around the corner or not, had she ever actually saved Gallifrey?

Even as the Master spoke, unwanted, in her mind, he never brought them both together. He never fully opened the stream and connected their minds into one. They could sit together again, if she wants them to. If not on Gallifrey.

The fam will judge her, but she knows they must be gone. Nothing else would make sense. She is alone, and the alternative tastes bitter on her tongue. But it is an alternative. If she is the one to reach out, then she will know.

Struggling in quicksand, only sinking faster, she reaches a shaking hand out to rest on the floor. _Contact_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hmmmmm so i had a different idea of where this was going but then this happened instead


	3. iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> turns out i cant stay away

_…contact._

A dragging sensation. The feel of her feet across sand, her whole body being lifted and whirled and then-

She is kneeling in red grass. Heat on her face. Just ahead, Gallifrey burns.

For a long time, she is alone. She watches, letting her eyes dart from one crumbling building to another. When her gaze jolts too quickly she can see children, running and screaming, out of the corner of her eye. Refocused, they are never there. But she thinks she can still hear them. She practices letting her gaze linger, instead. Wonders if a window just slammed shut, or if it was shut all along. Wonders if that figure is just a shadow caused by the flames, or if it is someone desperately gesturing at her for help. 

A building crumbles to the ground as she watches, and it makes her wonder, idly, with a sort of distant horror, if Gallifrey only burns while she looks at it. Certainly should be ashes by now. And yet it still stands, hulking and red and crumbling at the edges but only when she is there to see. It would be a fitting torture, if he is leaving her there to create the destruction. This time it would not be a hand on a button that did it. It would just be her eyes, that she could not tear away. Her knees that wouldn’t rise from their painful press into the rocks and dirt. 

She thinks she sees him out of the corner of her eye, but not the him this body knows. Other versions, flashing in darker hair and clothes, the one blonde. A terrible burned figure. Missy. She can’t quite turn to look, but she sees from the corner of her eye as the shifting figure staggers from behind, and a wave of fury comes with it. It is almost overwhelming. But against the pain in her chest it falls back and settles.

They are not actually in Gallifrey, she knows. They do not actually watch it burn, and they are not in his head or hers. They’ve found a share space. Somewhere they both were thinking about when the connection was made. He was just having trouble calming his thoughts enough to manifest properly for her. She gives him time.

It takes awhile, but finally, _finally_ , he stands over her, the way she knows him in this body, and whatever force held her back lets her turn her head to gaze at him. Why he should bring her such relief is beyond her. But her chest floods with it. She is still on her knees, staring over the burning landscape, and he stands beside her, hands in his pockets. Purple coat, like Missy’s purple dress. Eyes flashing with madness like the one before her.

His eyes jerk down to her and he grins before she can look away, but it is fake. Forced.

“Missed me, did you?” he asks, no mirth in his voice, no self-satisfied glee. Her chest aches. “Couldn’t stay away. I knew, it Doctor, but I thought this version of you was a bit more-” He stops, raises one hand into the air to tilt it back in forth. Like he’s describing something almost working, but not quite. “Bit more elusive.”

It occurs to her that she does not quite know how to get the answer to her question. Her mouth sticks shut, torn. She wants to defend herself, to show him she is elusive, she does not care about him and she does not want to see him. But she is desperate for his presence. For the one person who could possibly feel what she feels. The only other one who could possibly understand.

“Why are you here?” he says finally, and she struggles to keep from weeping as she looks up at him. 

“You’ve been talking to me,” she murmurs, and she hates the way she sounds a little desperate. “I came to- to-”

She can feel him smirk, and then he squats down, rolling back to sit in the dirt beside her. His hands splay behind his back to prop him up and she wants, madly, to take one. To touch him, to be physically connected, even if not really. A tether to hold her down. Instead she shoves her fingers deeper into sand. 

“Came to what, love?” he asks, his voice managing to be condescending even as he keeps it carefree.

She stares at him. “Came to…”

They're speaking, truly speaking, she can feel her lips move with a solid certainty. She realizes with a jolt and a fear for her friends

-even though they’ve left, she’s sure they’ve left, they asked the TARDIS for help and she’s turned against her too she took them away-

and she slams her mouth shut, teeth clacking. 

'Nothing', she murmurs in her own head. Their connection flashes between them, so solid she can see it. She's almost sick with certainty.

He huffs a breath out through his nose, casts his gaze over and across her like he doesn’t want to let his eyes linger for too long, like she’s dirty. “Come to bother me and you can’t even come up with a good reason why,” he says, and he’s trying so hard to be casual. 

Speaking has always been easy to her, ever since she fell through the train in Sheffield. It felt like she couldn’t stop, sometimes, speaking before she even thinks about it, the words plucked unbidden from the air. Nothing comes, this time.

She does not want confirmation anymore, she realizes, fear rising in her throat like bile. But he gives it.

“Haven’t been talking to you, anyway. Haven’t been able to reach you. I’ve tried, I’ll admit. Each time, there's a wall of misery in the way.”

Tears burst into her eyes, and she isn’t sure if it’s terror, anger, or acceptance that clenches in her stomach and makes her want to be sick.

He glances over at her and smirks. “We went to the same academy, Doctor. That level of negative emotion-” he leans back and whistles, impressed. “Every time I reached out I felt it radiating off of you. Thought it was on purpose at first, but I could practically hear your soul screaming through it.” He bares his teeth and shakes his head, like a dog trying to pull a treat from its owners hand. “I really wanted to see the state you were in, but I couldn’t get through it no matter how hard I tried.”

‘I don’t want to be here anymore,’ she thinks. 

They pause for a long moment, and she thinks he might protest. But then he shrugs. “You called me. I have better things to do.” And so the world begins to trickle away.

‘Where are you?’ she asks, her breath hitching in her throat.

He smirks again. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

She cannot ask, she does not think she can stand it if he says otherwise, but she is desperate, she needs to know, she _has_ to- “Do you feel bad about it?” she gasps, unable to hold it back even as the world begins to fade around her. She has to know, he has to feel bad, he has to understand-

His face, still settled into an amused numbness, morphs. His eyes go flat and cold the way O’s had on the plane just before lighting again with that terrible ecstasy. 

Fake smiles have, historically, come easy to both of them. For her it was usually faking mirth, faking excitement and joy, that she was able to drag so easily from her chest. He hid behind them, made them manic and scary and did not let any other feeling slip past. It seemed that, in their newish bodies, neither of them had quite gotten a hang of it yet. His mouth curls up just a bit at one corner, but when he looks at her his eyes are deep and dark. And as she slips from the edges of their burnt world, he opens his mouth. “There’s nothing to feel bad for.”

Her vision goes black.

—————

They have not left. They loom above her, waiting for her, as she blinks into awareness on the floor of the TARDIS.

“Fam-” she starts, and the way her vision seems to lag as she looks from one face to the other, she thinks she might not have completely sobered up. Her feet scrabble beneath her, kicking against the floor as if she would be able to stand.

“Stay down, Doc, you aren’t well,” Graham says, his voice much closer and softer then she thought, and she realizes with a start that they are all crouched around her, Yaz and Ryan on their knees. Her vision warps again as she tries to straighten up and she winces, pressing her palms against her eyes.

“Head hurts,” she murmurs as she slumps back against the wall.

“Not surprised,” Ryan says, and she can hear the way he’s trying to keep his voice light, trying to tease her, but can’t quite manage it. “You were in a right state last night.”

“You smell like a pub,” Yaz says, and the Doctor can hear the curl in her lip without looking at her. 

“Oh-” she can’t help the little noise of pain as she pulls at the hem of her jumper, looking down at it.

“Yeah, that thing,” Graham says. “We’ll need to get that in the wash. Looks like you bathed in whatever rubbish you were drinking.”

Her eyes shoot up to meet his. “Wash it?”

He nods, incredulous. “Yeah, wash. Ever heard of that, cockle?”

She does not answer. Something is swirling in her gut, because she had not considered that it could be saved. But just a wash-

“I told you about my home,” she says suddenly. The room goes so still she thinks the humans are holding their breaths. “Where I’m from, I mean. I didn’t- I didn’t want to tell you what happened to it.”

Her breath shudders through her chest. “I’ve been terrible, I have, I’ve been trying-” her voice cracks and she presses her lips together, feels them go white. Her hands are shaking where she has linked them together towards her lap.

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Not gonna say you haven’t been.” Yaz clicks her tongue and glares at him, but when the Doctor looks at her she holds eye contact and doesn’t protest. 

“But you’re allowed, if there’s something wrong,” he continues. “Family will stand by you even if you’re being terrible, but you have to tell us why.”

Very suddenly, she thinks of Martha Jones. That wonderful woman, who had traveled with her and had put up with her and had, finally left. She felt guilty over the way she had treated Martha every day. That guilt coils into something entirely new as she looks up at her fam, and realizes she could change her face a million times and still be the same man.

_It burned again, it burned again, it burned, it burned, it-_

“It burned,” she says, gasping a little at the end of her own words because it’s the first time she’s said it out loud. “Gallifrey burned to the ground. It- it fell. It doesn’t exist anymore. Everyone is dead. Everyone I ever knew, every place I ever stepped as a child, it’s all gone.”

She focuses her blurry vision and sees three pairs of wide, worried eyes, two of them wet at the edges. But Ryan’s have stayed firm and angry.

“It was the Master, wasn’t it?” he asks, his voice sharp.

She shrugs. “Doesn’t really matter.”

He scoffs. “How can it not matter? How- do you not care who did it?”

Her eyes dart up to his and she feels fury in her chest like an electric shock- but it fades just as fast, smothered, under the weight of- the weight of-

She doesn’t want to say it, but she’s going to. Her words are back, rising unbidden, unchecked, and she cannot stop herself. _I am doing it,_ she thinks, _I am going to say it, I’m going to tell them. I’m really doing this. I will say it._ And then, in the last, unending second before she opens her mouth, _why_ _am I saying it? Why won’t they stop me?_

“Of course I care who did it, but it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter because I’m the one who did it the first time,” she says, and her face breaks apart into a grin, her lip still not fully healed from where she’d split it. More copper in her mouth. “This is the second time it’s burned,” she clarifies before they can ask, words pouring from her mouth like a river. “It burned once, and it was my fault, but I saved it, did some timey stuff, spent my whole life before I was me doing it, and now- now it burned again. It- he-”

They are all staring at her, and the wetness in Yaz’s eyes has faded behind the growing horror there, but Graham has marks on his cheeks.

She burst out in a laugh and jerks forward, startling them. They all jump. Graham almost falls over.

“I was moving on, I was new! I was just a traveler again, I was going to get to live completely without that burden for the first time in thousands of years. I did it the first time, but I tried so hard, and then I got to move on, and then he undid it all like that!” she cries, snapping her fingers. And then she buries her face into her knees and sobs, her shoulders shaking. 

_They didn’t want to know,_ the voice that is not the Master croaks from the back of her head. _They just wanted you to get better, they didn’t want to do any work, they didn’t want to have to see this side of you, they just wanted you to get yourself out of your own head, not drag them into it too. They’ll hate you even more now._

She can feel that they haven’t left yet, but it is inevitable. They’re just waiting a second to be polite. Now that the fun is over, now that she is more than just something to do, they will go. They wanted entertainment, not an alien to hold up. What is her worth, if she is not making life fun for them?

 _You’re a burden,_ the voice says, and then Yaz’s arms are around the Doctor’s shoulders and her lips are pressed against her temple. With their light touch, the voice vanishes, and the door at the edge of her mind shuts with a gentle click.

The Doctor goes so stiff she might shatter if she moves, her hands flying up in front of her to- defend herself? Ward Yaz off? But the kiss doesn’t last very long at all, and Yaz shifts to rest her head on the Doctor’s shoulder.

“You can tell me to stop if you really want me to, and I will,” she says quietly, “but I think you need a hug.”

The Doctor does not tell her to stop.

They sit like that for a long moment until Ryan, too, shifts forward. He comes to sit at her other side and puts an arm around her shoulder, tucking her into him, careful to keep from hitting Yaz in the face as they move. The Doctor lets herself be handled and moved around, her hair falling in front of her eyes, vision already obstructed by unshed tears.

Graham winces as he rises from his crouch. “I’m too old to be cuddling on the floor like that, sorry kids. They’ve got you, Doc, and I’m gonna go put the kettle on and we’ll all sit down for tea. I’ll make fried egg sarnies too for you, love, it’ll help with the hangover.” He’s off before she can protest, but she isn’t sure she would have anyway. The warmth radiating from her friends has seeped into her chest, and she blinks slowly, fatigue draping itself over her like a cat.

She can feel them deciding what to say, her telepathy rubbed raw at the edges and leaking through a bit. But her mind is truly empty, and she does not open up further. She just lets herself be lulled by their presence, by the way they go back and forth between wanting to apologize, wanting to question her, wanting to comfort her. 

“I’d still like to see it,” Yaz says after another long moment, her decision reached. None of the above. The Doctor, half asleep, hums a bleary, question-y sound.

She can feel Yaz’s cheek on her shoulder move as she smiles, just a little. “Gallifrey. If you want to show us. I would still like to see it.”

Ryan nods on her other side. “Same. Might help you to share the burden.”

“Share the burden,” she mumbles, dubious. 

Sharing the burden is not something she would have considered doing, before. But she sighs and lets her eyes close.

“Another time,” she says, and this time she means it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay its really done now. thank you for all of the wonderful comments on this!!! i'm sure ill be posting more weird angsty stuff soon. also if anyone gets the haunting of hill house novel reference we get to be bffs

**Author's Note:**

> i love comments almost as much as i love grumpy!13. let me know what you think!


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